Tesla has started executing on Robotaxi but a lot more must happen to enable a big share price run.
There are two key things that must happen.
There needs to be the massive expansion to at least 20,000 vehicles offering robotaxi in multiple cities.
There needs to be a surge in car sales either from the new lower priced model or from demand from a robotaxi quality automated driving experience.
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Well before there is a significant surge in profits from robotaxi ride services per se, there will be a surge from a rapid increase in the rate of Tesla owners and new buyers choosing to pay for FSD software either by purchase or subscription.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/07/tesla-fsd-profits-will-explode.html
This can happen much faster than than other sorts of robotaxi profit growth and will be a likely stock price catalyst.
The lure of earning by ridesharing with late model cars while at work, or at home might sell some cars. Tesla has been floating the idea of ridesharing for some time.
Ridesharing would be a capital efficient way for Tesla to dominate the ridesharing space quickly. It would also get the company lots of publicity.
Why doesn’t Tesla just go ahead and monopolise Robotaxi? Fleet owners will out compete private owners and Tesla can out compete fleet owners.
Because it doesn’t work. And if you own the fleet the whole legal responsibility for each accident is completely yours. If you own the FSD system but someone else owns the car you (that manage the FSD data) can claim it is an hardware maintenance issue and make a long legal battle for every case
Tesla will have sole legal liability for autonomous vehicles running its software, ownership simply won’t impact that. The reason to sell robotaxis is just efficient use of Capital and rapid scaling. Tesla got to this point by being the only player that got other people to pay for it to train it’s system at scale and it can grow to occupy the market much faster if it uses other people’s money to own millions of its robotaxis. Waymo and everybody else followed the burn your own cash for training and own everything method. Ten million robotaxis cost $200B and it matters if you can get that from third parties. Tesla is politically much better positioned all over the world if it shares fleet ownership and profits with local investors. This is also why Tesla will license FSD tech more or less at cost to other OEMs. FSD inside other brands lets Tesla scale faster, keep the majority of the profits that come from the software – not owning or making the hardware – and smooth the political opposition that would otherwise arise from steamrolling other OEMs in markets all over the world.